


rise and fall

by slowrotations



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Chinese Mythology & Folklore, M/M, jiacheng: jiacheng, wen junhui: part-time demon full-time bastard, xu minghao: amateur demonic summoning ace, yanan: professional item hoarder, zhennan: terrible baby demon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 07:16:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16383728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slowrotations/pseuds/slowrotations
Summary: Minghao’s roped into summoning a demon companion. Junhui’s not really a demon, but very companionable.





	rise and fall

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for the hiatus .. am but a gay in school
> 
> hope u enjoy this it is the product of me and cofy at 4am . 8jun in my personal gay onion is very, very valid and i hope by the end of this u think so as well
> 
> chapter title: artificial grass - akdong musician

“Hello!” the shop owner behind the large wooden desk trills, blinking owlishly at Minghao from behind big round glasses. “Welcome to Magic Yooniverse. May I help you?”

Ah. Truth be told, Minghao doesn’t know how exactly to phrase his requirement delicately— or at all. But he tries anyway. “Can I, uh. Do you happen to have a demon summoning kit in stock, by any chance?— A beginner’s kit.”

At that, the owner’s eyebrows raise and almost disappear beneath his blond fringe— and Minghao doesn’t know what exactly one expects to be a demon summoner to look like, to be fair, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t fit the bill. He does make Fashion Statements, but his Amateur Hell Sorcerer looks are usually solely reserved for his dance shows. So he clarifies hastily, “I’m a friend of Seokmin and Soonyoung’s. They sent me here to… run… an errand.”

Thankfully, the owner grins knowingly and says, eyes crinkled at the edges, “Oh, don’t worry about pretenses. You’re not the first to lose to those two and end up in here.”

At that, Minghao grimaces, a little distressed at the notion of multiple people showing up to this cozy magic shop without warning, all with various possibly demonic demands. He tries not to let it show too much.

“You did lose a bet, didn’t you?” the owner asks, now obviously holding back laughter. “Okay, we’ll get you a beginner’s demon summoning kit. I’m Jeonghan, by the way. Seokmin works part-time here, which is why I know him.”

“I’m Minghao,” he replies, fidgeting with one of his coat sleeves. It’s no surprise to him that Seokmin knows Jeonghan— one of the first things Minghao learned when he first moved into town was that Seokmin, much like an extremely popular and terrible neighborhood dog, is everywhere and knows everyone.

Jeonghan pulls himself out of the slightly creaky wooden chair and motions towards the depths of the shop. “Follow me, Minghao,” he instructs, edging his way through endless shelves of plants and jars and crystals. Minghao obliges, and while he trails him, he notices something unearthly about the way Jeonghan moves— delicate and deliberate, like he’s floating.

“Are you fey?” Minghao asks, then actually registers his words and winces right away. “Sorry. I hope that wasn’t rude.” He didn’t mean to be that brusque, but— thankfully— the other man doesn’t seem to mind.

“Half!” Jeonghan declares while pushing open a creaky wooden door that’s draped with glowing, verdant foliage. When Minghao reaches to catch the door before it shuts on him, the vines curve in towards his hand lazily, uncoiling back once he steps inside and the door shuts behind him.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jeonghan assures him while scanning the shelves. “We tend to recognize our kind, don’t we?” He purses his lips in contemplation for a second before reaching out and plucking the bluntly-named “Demonic Summoning for Dummies” off of a bookshelf, along with a board-game-sized box labelled “HELL-o.”

“What?” Minghao asks. He wasn’t aware of this.

Jeonghan tilts his head at him. “You didn’t know?”

“N— no, I don’t— huh,” Minghao says and furrows his eyebrows. “That makes… a certain amount of sense, actually.”

“If it helps,” Jeonghan adds, “it’s only a small amount. Less than a quarter, from what I can tell.”

“I’m gonna have a talk with my parents,” mutters Minghao, pleasantly surprised when Jeonghan laughs loudly at his words.

“Anyways, uh— back on topic. I’d recommend buying both of these if you’re a beginner beginner, but if you’ve got prior knowledge you only need HELL-o,” Jeonghan offers.

Minghao doesn’t think he’s a beginner beginner at the magical world, and a small, indignant part of him stubbornly objects to being referred to as a “dummy” by an inanimate book. He says, “I think I’ll only need HELL-o, but thank you anyways.”

Jeonghan rings him up while somewhere within the depths of his mind he begins to process that in approximately one hour, he will be conducting a ritual to pull a demon out from the depths of the underworld. Even as Jeonghan rings up and hands him the HELL-o kit with a sparkling “Have a magical day!” he’s feeling his dread-o-meter slowly rising, fueled by the extremely delayed realization that he’s gonna have a _fucking demon_ to deal with for however long this contract lasts.

To Minghao, this is a slightly unsettling thought to absorb and he really doesn’t even want to begin thinking of the logistical nightmare this could become. So he doesn’t. He takes the small amount of panic bubbling up somewhere around his sternum and compresses it into a tiny cube so he can shove it back into a compartment between his ribcage and his heart.

This is fine.

“This is fine,” he tells the potted tree next to the shop entrance. It curls its leaves disdainfully.

<><><>

This, Minghao realizes, is not fine.

It was fine when he texted the picture of his HELL-o kit to the group chat like Soonyoung’s rules had demanded. (It was less fine when he had to explain the function of the kit to the rest of the chat as Soonyoung and Seungkwan spammed them with various triumphant and mocking stickers, but it was bearable.) (One day, karma was going to _finally_ react to the disturbance in its field and forcibly eject Kwon Soonyoung from the solar system.)

It was fine when he stuffed the kit into his dance bag and it fell out when he set it down before practice. Yanan asked what it was curiously, and because he’s Yanan, Minghao said, “A demon-summoning kit.” At this, Jiacheng did a tiny double take from his position several meters away, but Yanan just nodded— completely unfazed— and replied, “You can do it! Be careful not to knock over any candles— oh, and also, I can lend you my incantation book, if you want,” and by the end of that dialogue Minghao’s eyebrows had shot straight up. Jiacheng toppled over mid-stretch. Minghao accepted the other’s offer, a bit dazed from awe, and thought to himself that Yanan had hidden layers.

It was fine even after he returned to his apartment and showered, changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt, and cleared off his table and drew out each rune and circle pattern, all while still obstinately ignoring the bad cocktail of anticipation and trepidation vigorously mixing itself together somewhere in the space he’d left it.

He can’t pinpoint where exactly _fine_ transitioned into _not fine,_ but he guesses it probably started going downhill right around when he pulled out the candles and lighter. (The kit didn’t have enough candles so he borrowed some from Yanan’s Enigmatic Collection Of Objects— which, with all its enigmaticness, did not contain any candles of a color other than a cheery pastel yellow.) Or— maybe it was when he lit them and switched off the lights, leaving nothing illuminated but the faded wood of his table and melting candle wax. Or when he sat down right in front of the circle and cracked open Yanan’s guide to read it out loud, painstakingly pronouncing each word, syllable by syllable.

It doesn’t really matter, he realizes, where it started. Because right now— right after he finishes the incantation, the flames shoot up so high that he’s absolutely sure his kitchen table will be permanently scorched. Instinctively, he flings himself back in his chair. The room crackles with energy, fiery and bold. Minghao tastes— not smoke. Brine. Seawater.

His brain is a whirlpool of thoughts, mostly along the lines of “what the fuck what the fuck what the _fuck_ ” and “please don’t damage my furniture any further,” but he’s not disoriented enough to miss how the flames have bled into green-blue fingers, pulling tightly in on each other to form a column. It spins and coils and braids itself, growing whiter and brighter— Minghao shields his eyes, squinting—

— there’s a flash, and his vision whites out. He squeezes his eyes shut against the wave of light, the crashing in his ears, wind and wave colliding, shattering, reforming as one staggering noise— it crescendos in volume— roars at him— rolling and churning, whirlpool-like, then—

— then silence, cruel in its relief, washing white over his senses and jerking his eyes wide open, pulling his consciousness back in with the tide.

His vision returns slowly. Reds and oranges resurface first, then yellows and deep purples, and finally, right as blue and green seep back into sight, he notices the _boy_ perched gracefully atop his— incredibly— undamaged kitchen table. (In fact— for whatever reason, it looks like the table has been scrubbed clean and freshly varnished.) There are no half-melted candles or smudged chalk lines anywhere in sight, replaced with the boy and the clean scent of sea spray.

The dreadful feeling from earlier returns with all the fury and intent to harm of a stray Frisbee— the realization that since the loss of the bet approximately five and a half hours ago, he’s been ignoring a cargo ship’s worth of stress. Truth is, Minghao is a terrible, terrible procrastinator who simply ignores all of his stress— and the fact is that he simply failed to fully process that he was _summoning a fucking demon._ And now he’s forced to confront the consequences in the form of a suspiciously clean table and a generally suspicious boy.

He steels himself and makes direct eye contact with the boy. The other’s eyes are a deep blue green, unnervingly hypnotizing. His hair is pure white, styled perfectly and framing his face ethereally. _This is a very unhelpful line of thought,_ Minghao realizes, so he discards it immediately.

Minghao clears his throat lightly. “Hey.”

Honestly, Minghao isn’t sure what he’s expecting, or if he expects an answer at all. But to his surprise, the boy— demon, probably? He should be a demon, right?— his face splits into a grin and his whole body moves with the force of his enthusiastic wave, breaking out of its perfect marble statue cast. “Hi!”

“I take it you’re my— the— ah, demon? That I summoned?” Minghao stutters. He then immediately wants to undo every string of fate and predictable-but-unwanted attraction that led him to say that.

Thank every god in existence, the probably-demon-boy is unfazed and cheery as ever and thus less likely to smite him out of sheer pity. “That’s me! Except— ah. Technicalities.”

The sudden switch in tone piques Minghao’s curiosity. “Technicalities?”

“I’m not… a demon? Like, not always?” the boy admits, sheepish. He tugs at his fingers nervously, hunches his shoulders. “I’m kind of a… deity, maybe. Not exactly Asmodeus.”

Something about the apologeticness coloring his voice nudges at Minghao, so he shrugs his shoulders and gives him his most reassuring smile. “Wasn’t looking for Asmodeus. He’s a little scary.”

“Right? That’s always what I told Zhennan and the others, but nobody _ever_ listens,” the boy nods and agrees fervently, eyes wide with emphasis. His shoulders have relaxed and his hands are still. “Oh! I just realized I haven’t introduced myself yet.”

“It’s okay. Neither have I,” Minghao starts, but he’s waved off.

“Don’t worry about that, Xu Minghao— you stated your name in the companionship contract already,” the probably-not-a-demon-demon-boy assures him. “But you should guess who I am!”

For the second time in just as many hours, Minghao’s struck with how little experience he’s got with demonology and how woefully unprepared he is for any of it. Unfortunately, his panic must’ve shown on his face, because Mr. Not-A-Demon drops his face into an exaggerated pout of disappointment.

“C’mooooon,” he whines, “I appeared at your call for a reason, Xu Minghao.”

(Minghao steadily ignores the jolt of electricity that goes through his spine at his name.)

It’s partially because even now he’s only got the slightest idea of what kind of deity the other boy is, and partially because he seems fun to tease— which is why Minghao shakes his head and sighs, “Nope. No idea, sorry.”

The deity-demon-boy scrunches his face up, and maybe now isn’t the time but Minghao is absolutely fascinated with how open his expressions are, the demon with his heart on his sleeve. “Fine, I’ll spill. Remember Ao Guang?”

It takes him about two seconds of leafing through the tomes of ancient Chinese literature permanently stored somewhere in a far corner of his brain. “You’re—”

The deity— Ao Guang— grins once again, and this time Minghao notices the near-feline curve to the corners of his eyes, the strips of blue and green hidden amongst the folds of his outfit, the ever-present scent of the ocean. _Dragon god of the east and guardian of the East China Sea,_ his brain unhelpfully reminds him. _Qinglong. Essence of spring._

Qinglong was in the texts he studied when he was in school, a literal myth. The boy in front of him held literal thousands of years of adventures and power.

“You were in Journey to the West,” is what Minghao’s amphibian brain decides as an acceptable response.

“I was!” Ao Guang says. His canines are fanged, which is absolutely not affecting Minghao’s thought capacity in any form.

“Oh, fuck,” Minghao continues. “You’re a _dragon._ You met Sun fucking Wukong.”

The deity frowns. “I don’t like to reminisce on that particular one. Little rascal monkey guy took all my equipment. Fucked up the tides so badly it took years to pull them back into schedule.”

Minghao takes a deep breath, lets it out as slowly as he can. The dragon deity on his kitchen table is talking about Sun Wukong, the protagonist of one of the four biggest pieces of Chinese literature, as if he were a particularly bothersome little brother. He also just said the word “fuck” aloud.

Ao Guang looks right into Minghao, picks up his sudden tenseness (again), and relaxes his posture, slipping off the table to sling his arm around the other’s shoulders. “Hey,” he says comfortingly, patting him once, twice. “Don’t overthink it. I— you know, I have another name.”

It’s a bit of a ridiculous statement, because Ao Guang has at least five official titles and dozens of unofficial ones, but. But. The way his tone shifted— softer, almost secretive— indicates something more subdued.

Minghao’s not sure what to say, so he just nods and looks at Ao Guang. The other’s eyes are cast downward, but snap up to meet his.

“Wen Junhui,” the boy says. “That’s my other name.”

“Wen Junhui?” Minghao tests the syllables on his tongue, memorizing each of the tones: the rise, the fall, the steady. “How do you write it?”

Ao Guang— Junhui— shrugs. “No idea. Never got it written out.”

“Did you receive the name or make it?” Minghao frowns in thought.

Ao— Junhui smiles again, but it’s more of a smirk. Not really closed off, but challenging, playful. “That,” he declares, “is a friendship tier 8 question. Be nice to me and you might get the answer.”

Oh, Minghao thinks, that is _not_ fair. He’s capable at many talents and skills, but refusing challenges, regrettably, is not and never has been one of them. He’s now obligated to befriend Junhui and find out his secrets.

Before he can despair about it too long, he remembers. “Oh, can I get a quick picture with you? It’s, uh. My friends dared me to do the whole ritual on my own and they’re asking for proof.”

“No problem!” Junhui says. He watches Minghao fumble his phone out of his pocket and switch to the front-facing camera. “Wait. Are we taking a selfie?”

Minghao feels every single cell in his body turn to ice. “You. Ah. You know what a selfie is?”

“Selfie, zipai, selca,” Junhui lists gleefully. “I know what it is in at least three languages!”

There is truly something, Minghao thinks, to the indescribable anguish one experiences when an ancient god says the word “selfie” with no hint of remorse. Distressingly, said god seems to be unbothered— on the contrary, the longer Minghao winces, the more Junhui’s eyes brighten with mischief.

_I’ve summoned a demon that feeds off my despair,_ Minghao thinks, and jabs his elbow into Junhui’s side grumpily.

He takes the picture. And then another. And another. And another. Because of course the guardian of the fucking sea with the unnecessarily beautiful face would be _that_ kind of photographer and model, demanding they try out different poses and filters to find the one that fits them perfectly. Yet— Minghao’s completely aghast to find that his own protests and snide jabs are already carrying the fond note he usually only develops after 10 months of friendship.

Finally, they’re both satisfied with one shot of them posing with a cat whisker filter (Junhui with a small, squishy smile and Minghao staring blank-faced at the camera, both throwing up peace signs) and Minghao sends it to the group chat. Within a minute, he’s gotten five keysmashes (mostly Seokmin and Soonyoung, one from Jisoo), three shocked stickers (Soonyoung and Hansol), several that could be read as compliments (“U NEVER TOLD ME UR DEMON WAS HOT??????” Seungkwan’s read. “GOOD LUCK DUDE??”), and a singular ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) (sent sans explanation from Jihoon). They’ve moved from the kitchen to the living room couch, and Junhui’s plopped himself down right next to Minghao, who restrains himself from making any extra noise or movement. Junhui’s peering over his shoulder to read the ever-flowing message stream so Minghao tilts his phone to let the other boy see, making a note to remind himself to get Junhui a phone, if he was planning on staying on the mortal plane for a while.

“How long are you gonna stay here?” Minghao asks, scrolling down lazily. “Also, can you read and speak Korean?”

Junhui retrieves a pillow from the other side of the couch and hugs it tightly. “I’ll stay as long as the contract lasts. Yes, I’m fluent in Korean.”

He tries to remember the terms of the contract, but exhaustion is washing gently over him, settling deeper and deeper. “Hmgh. Ghg. Sorry, can’t remember the contract right now. Also... why are you fluent in Korean.” His question comes out flat, like a statement, but he’s too tired to care.

“Companionship contract, remember? I keep you company for as long as you’ll have me, then I get to eat your soul,” Junhui explains, deceptively earnest. “You’re on tier two of friendship right now, so I’ll indulge you. China’s not the only one with dragon gods.”

“No,” Minghao mumbles, deciding he really, truly doesn’t have the energy to even somewhat address the second answer. “You don’t eat my soul. You share my magic energy.”

Junhui snickers softly. “Yeah, that’s right. I could eat your soul, though.”

“Get your own soul,” Minghao retorts. For some reason, Junhui finds that hilarious. It’s getting hard for Minghao to think about anything but the night, and how everything smells like the beach at dusk. Was it always this warm on the couch?

He scrunches his nose and forces his eyelids open. They’re not supposed to be so heavy, he realizes. “My eyelids weigh too much,” he says.

Junhui’s face is a little blurry when Minghao looks up at him. He blinks once, twice, trying to focus on the other. It looks kind of like Junhui’s suppressing a smile. “You just completed a ritual. You’re tired.”

“Okay,” Minghao agrees. He kind of wants to lie down on this warm couch, so he does, slumping to the left across Junhui’s lap. Beyond the walls and windows, crickets chirp and cicadas hum steadily, unceasingly. “G’night.”

“Good night, Haohao,” Junhui says. Fingers card through his hair. The couch shifts slightly, and the lamp clicks off.

**Author's Note:**

> aaaah my writing muscles .. they Feel Nice
> 
> feel free to ask any questions abt the lore ! a lot of this is influenced by my own chinese culture & might b difficult to understand but hopefully i explained things well for the most part.... mythology is only gonna b a small part of the whole story and i hope it enhances the Experience ^^ the setting is tentatively in modern day seoul but its not super important to the story
> 
> if u want u can leave a comment or kudos! i hope u all have a lovely day <3


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